To wit, thy chaplain whom thou hast given me has looked on me with lustful eyes, and has bidden me buy of him ease and surcease of pain with my very body, and hath threatened me more evil else, and kept his behest." Then leapt up the Earl and cried out: "Hah! did he so?
Then I tell thee his monk's hood shall not be stout enough to save his neck.

Now, my child, thou speakest; tell me more, since my hair is whitening." She said: "The sleek, smooth-spoken woman to whom thou gavest me, didst thou bid her to torment me with stripes, and the dungeon, and the dark, and solitude, and hunger ?" "Nay, by Allhallows!" he said, "nor thought of it; trust me she shall pay therefor if so she hath done." She said: "I crave no vengeance, but mercy I crave, and thou mayst give it me." Then were they both silent, till he said: "Now I, for my part, will pray thee bear what thou must bear, which shall be nought save this, that thy queenship lie quiet for a while; nought else of evil shall betide thee henceforth; but as much of pleasure and joy as may go with it.

But tell me, there is a story of thy snatching a holiday these two days, and of a young man whom thou didst happen on.

Tell me now, not as a maiden to her father or warder, but as a great lady might tell a great lord, what betid betwixt you two: for thou art not one on whom a young and doughty man may look unmoved.

By Allhallows! but thou art a firebrand, my Lady!" And he laughed therewith.
Goldilind flushed red exceeding; but she answered steadily: "Lord Earl, this is the very sooth, that I might not fail to see it, how he thought me worth looking on, but he treated me with all honour, as a brother might a sister." "Tell me," said the Earl, "what like was this man ?" Said she: "He was young, but strong beyond measure; and full doughty: true it is that I saw him with mine eyes take and heave up one of our men in his hands and cast him away as a man would a clod of earth." The Earl knit his brow: "Yea," said he, "and that story I have heard from the men-at-arms also.